Zoe checked her watch—the third Rolex she’d had since all this started. “Ten minutes. You have ten minutes.”
Hunter nodded. “I thought we were pretty well ahead by now.”
“We are, but who knows how many more stops we have?”
“Good point.” Hunter started chopping the roots while Zoe looked for boulders.
The sun beat down on Hunter as he chopped. Sweat flowed from his brow and bangs as he hacked away. Zoe rolled a boulder over to Hunter that was too big for her to pick up .
“How’s that?”
He didn’t stop working. “Should work fine.”
Zoe looked at her watch once more. “What can I do?”
He stopped long enough to look at her. “Nothing. That boulder ought to do. Just let me get this root out of here.”
Zoe nodded and pulled water from her bag, handing it to Hunter. “Stay hydrated. I don’t need you passing out on me.”
Hunter took the water and drank a little. Handing it back, he continued chopping.
As Zoe was putting the water back in the bag, movement caught her eye in the distance. Shielding her eyes from the sun, Zoe couldn’t see anything but the line of wavering mirage on the horizon. It looked alive. She could have sworn she saw something.
Walking forward in the shimmering heat, she took five steps before she saw them.
“Oh shit!” Hustling back to the backpack, she grabbed both their bows and called out, “Dogs!”
Hunter glanced up, snatched his bow off the ground, and in one incredibly swift motion, took aim and killed three before Zoe could steady her hand enough to kill one.
It wouldn’t be enough. They both knew it. There were at least two dozen dogs bearing down on them.
“We’re fucked,” Zoe said, striking but not putting down another dog.
Hunter knew she was right. They were coming too fast. Grabbing Zoe, he pushed her to the bike.
“What the fuck?”
“Trust me. Please, there’s no time. Get under the bike.” Hunter pulled the bike on top of her.
“Jesus, Hunter, I can barely bre—”
“Stay under it. No need both of us dying.”
“No! Hunter!” Zoe struggled in vain to get out from underneath the heavy bike.
“I love you, Zoe. If I die, tell my dad I died well.” Grabbing his bow, he took off running toward the lone tree about a hundred yards away.
“Hunter!” Zoe started to squirm out from under the motorcycle when the snarling pack ran by her snapping and barking as they closed in on a fleeing Hunter.
Three sniffed around the bike, growling, but quickly turned to join the pack chasing the easier prey. As soon as they were gone, Zoe managed to crawl out from under the safety of the bike, scraping her back against the unforgiving ground just as a lone German Shepard bared its teeth at her. A low growl emanated threateningly from its throat. She replied by embedding her machete in its head before getting on the motorcycle and starting it.
Peeling out, she could see what Hunter’s plan was and she knew without a doubt that he would never make it.
As the pack closed in on him, Zoe laid on the throttle—the now unfamiliar sound making some of the dogs stop to look. The first two she kicked in the head as she zipped by. When she looked up, she saw one dog leap on Hunter and bring him down, the rest of the pack jumping on him even as Hunter clutched onto the first dog he’d gutted as he landed on his back.
“Hunter!”
Zoe roared right up to the biting, snarling pack attacking Hunter. The sound of his clothes ripping and tearing told she was too late. Leaping off the bike, she pulled both short machetes out and started swinging like a woman possessed. Chunks of fur and spurts of blood flew as her blades cut into heads, backs, tails, anything she could connect with. She flailed and swung, chopped and cut her way into anything that moved.
If they bit her, she didn’t notice. She just kept hacking and swinging away at the yelping dogs.
Over and over, Zoe’s blades cut into the dogs, most of which were now wounded and bleeding. A large black Doberman whirled on her and as he was in mid-air, she cut off both front legs, its blood adding to the mixture of dirt and blood on her arms and face.
Single-mindedly swinging her machetes, slicing into hair and skin, Zoe cut the nose off a dog that tore at her ankle. Seconds seemingly turned to decades as she chopped and swung, cut, sliced, and embedded her steel over and over in dogs that finally started backing away from the crazy lady.
The final four were biting Hunter’s legs and arms.
“Mother fuckers!” she yelled, raising both machetes and bringing them down on the spines of two dogs, which collapsed, their spinal cords severed. The last two growled and turned to her, Hunter’s blood dripping from their mouths. Their hackles stood up as they lowered their heads at her, preparing to leap.
“Come and get it, you motherfucking mutts.”
Standing in a circle, surrounded by dead and dying dogs, blood, sweat, and dirt clinging to her, Zoe crossed her arms and waited. When the two dogs pounced at her, she brought her machetes outward in a high arcing motion, slicing their throats. They fell on top of the pile, dead.
Whirling toward the wounded ones standing on the perimeter, she picked up Hunter’s crossbow and killed all but the only two smart enough to limp away.
Her chest heaving, Zoe looked down at the unmoving Hunter, his bloody and torn forearms still clutching the dog to his chest. The dog had bits of fur torn out and was bleeding all over him.
“Hunter?” Pushing the dog off him, she saw Hunter covered in blood. Masses of fur and torn flesh lay over his chest and all around him.
“No, no, no,” Zoe said, putting her head on his chest. “Come on, dude! They’re all dead. Come back. Don’t you fucking leave me out here by myself.” Cradling him in her arms, she rocked him gently and tried to find a pulse in his neck. “Come on, man, don’t leave me. Please.”
Movement out of the corner of her eye made her grab her machete, ease it out from under Hunter’s body, and run toward it. “Come here, you piece of shit dog!”
The dog tried hobbling away on its three good legs, but Zoe hit it so hard with her machete, she nearly cut it in two.
“Come on, mother fuckers! Bring it you fucking pieces of shit! I’m not afraid of you!” She stood with her bloody encrusted machetes at the ready.
“No, but I’m seriously afraid of you. You look like a fucking crazy woman.”
It was Hunter.
Zoe ran to him and knelt down, grabbing his hand. “Jesus Christ, Hunter, you scared me to death.”
He swallowed hard. “Have you seen yourself? Pretty fucking scary.”
Zoe surveyed her bloody arms. Her whole shirt was covered in blood. Pieces of fur and skin hung from her arms and shirt. “Well someone had to kill them while you laid here under a fur blanket catching a nap letting me do all the heavy lifting.”
Hunter winked, and Zoe looked down at his bitten and torn forearms. Pulling her shirt off, she tore it in two and wrapped his arms up in them. “How are your hands?”
He held up his left hand. It had puncture marks on it. “My right is okay.”
Pulling out her sharpest knife, she cut into her leather pant leg, making them into shorts.
“You’re running out of clothes.”
“And you’re running out of blood. Come on. You watch the dogs. I’ll use the boulder. Again, you’re leaving the real work to me.”
“You can’t lift that.”
“Yeah, and I can’t kill twenty dogs by myself, either.” Helping him up, she saw for the first time the white bone of his ankle. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah. They fucked me up.”
“Well get unfucked. We need to fix that rail and you need to cover me. So don’t even think about fainting.”
Helping him hobble over to the bike, Zoe placed his bow into his bloody hands.
“Time?”
“Five minutes. We gotta boogie.” Zoe looked at Hunte
r and knew she had mere minutes before he passed out—minutes she didn’t have to spare.
Throwing her leg over the bike saddle, she pulled him on back before making their way back to the raised rail and hopping off. “Stay on the bike and shoot anything that moves. You pass out and I am leaving you here.”
Closing her eyes, she whispered as she stood in front of the boulder “Light as a feather,” like her parents did when they played that parlor game of lifting someone with two fingers.
“Light as a feather.” Keeping her back straight, she picked up the boulder, walked five feet and dropped it on the track. Kneeling to examine the track, she smiled victoriously.
“Yes! We did it!”
“Not we. You.” Hunter’s head bobbed down, his chin hitting his chest.
Zoe picked up the weapons and took the strap off her rifle. “Dude—you’re about to pass out, but we gotta jam. Stay with me, man.” She wrapped up his ankle with her pant leg, and then got on. Throwing the strap around him, she pulled him to her and tied it in front of her so he wouldn’t slide off. “Lean on me. Put your head right here.” She patted between her shoulder blades. I’m not losing you now.” She started the motorcycle, and zoomed off, leaving the bodies of two dozen dogs to rot in the mid-morning sun.
****
The new members of their group were able to curl up on the seats after Dallas finished explaining everything that had happened to them. They had several questions, a couple wept, but for the most part were just thrilled to finally be free.
As Dallas left the car so they could sleep, a black woman who was easily six-three or six-four approached her.
“Ma’am, can I speak to you in private?”
“Sure. Come into my office.” Dallas motioned to the next car.
“I’m Tate,” she said, extending a hand Dallas was sure could palm a men’s basketball.
“Welcome aboard, Tate. What can I answer for you?” Dallas sat, her side burning.
Tate replied. “I don’t know about the rest of these women, but I want to fight.”
“The man eaters?”
She nodded. “Whatever you call them things, and anything else that tries to harm us. I’m done being cooped up, taken advantage of, and thrown backwards two hundred years. No sir, I’m fittin’ to kill someone if they show they face again.”
Dallas noticed scarred teeth marks on her forearm. They were healed over and looked months old. “How’d you get that?”
“They ain’t from them zombies. No ma’am. One of them fuckin’ Neanderthals bit me once when I first landed in the compound and I fought back. He and I both paid a price for that decision.”
Dallas liked her. “Fighting isn’t all we know how to do, Tate. It’s up to us survivors to save this nation of ours.”
Tate shook her head. “Some only know how to survive. I want more than that. I want to fight.”
“Then it looks like you’re in the right place. Do you know any of those other women?”
She shook her head. “I was kept in a diff…different section.”
Dallas frowned. “I don’t follow.”
Tate pointed to the back of her hand. “Did you really think those rednecks would keep a black woman with the rest of the population? No, no. It was to the back of the bus for me. See, I was good enough to fuck, but not good enough to make babies. You know…for the new world order and all.” Her laughter was as deep as it was bitter.
Dallas closed her eyes and shook her head. “I am so very sorry.
“Don’t be. I’s alive and kickin’. I jus’ need a target is all. Templeton only managed to get me because they hadn’t reassigned me yet, what with all the confusion and all.”
Dallas leaned forward. “You say his name with some disdain. How come?”
“Personally? I’d throw his ass off this movin’ train if’n it were up to me.”
“Even though he freed you?”
She shrugged. “Dallas, any man who could stand by while dozens of women are raped daily don’t deserve my trust, let alone the chance to live, but since you done recruited him, I’ll back off. For now. Just keep him from me. He come near me, all bets is off.”
Dallas’s eyes narrowed. Maybe she didn’t like her as much as she thought. “For now?”
Tate nodded, her deep brown eyes filling with rage and…something else. Loathing? “If I am ever alone wit’ him, I’ll kill him. Plain and simple. And if that bothers you, stop this thing and I’ll get off right here.”
Leaning back, Dallas folded her arms across her chest. “You don’t think him being here is a sincere choice to get away from there?”
“The men could leave at any point, Dallas. Any. Point. Yet, even in an apocalypse, men won’t walk away from free pussy.”
Dallas stared out the window at the brown landscape passing by before returning her gaze to Tate’s face. She had a scar across her eyebrow and one down her lip. This woman was clearly a fighter. “You’ve made a good point, but you must understand that my decision to keep him means he’s one of us now.”
“Don’t be a fool, Dallas. That man is trouble. You think about it. Ask yourself how it is that two dozen of us escaped unnoticed. How come no one chased after us? How come none of us is pregnant. They’s a lotta unanswered questions.” Tate shrugged. “I’s jus’ sayin.’”
Dallas cocked her head. “You’ve made some very good points.”
“My point in talkin’ to you wasn’t about that prick or about killin’ him. My point was to ask you when do we get weapons?”
Dallas chuckled. “Oh. Well, what’s your preference?”
She motioned with her chin at Dallas’s Glock. “I was a cop before this shit went down. I’m pretty handy wit’ a sidearm.”
“Duly noted.”
Rising, Tate started back to the other car.
“Tate? Can I ask your real name?”
She turned. “Tate is my real name now, but before this, it was Tatisha. She died when she had to shoot her lover in the head after she turned.” She shrugged. “I always knew getting involved with straight chicks was a bad idea. What’s your real name?”
“Actually, it’s Dallas.”
“And she’s your lover?” Tate looked out the opposite car door at Roper.
Dallas nodded and grinned. “Yes, she is.”
Nodding, Tate started through the door. “Lucky girl.”
“Her or me?”
“Both.”
****
When Dallas finished with her walk through the train making sure people were all doing what they were supposed to, she went back on top of the caboose and sat there, letting the warm wind caress her face. She hoped Zoe and Hunter were okay. Of course, after watching Zoe keep that bike up after hitting the ground going twenty miles an hour, she wasn’t too concerned. She was amazing, that girl.
“What’s on your mind?” Roper asked, sitting next to Dallas.
“You know, you’re getting really good at creeping around.”
“Thanks, I think. I just know you well enough to know when something is troubling you. Care to share?”
Running her hand through her hair, Dallas bit her bottom lip. “Did you notice that none of the women Templeton brought are…well…white?”
Roper frowned. “I hadn’t noticed. Are you sure?”
Dallas nodded. “Not a Caucasian in the bunch.”
“Hmm. That is odd.”
“What do you think about Templeton?”
“I don’t. He’s trying to stay alive like the rest of us. Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it, but one thing has really been bothering me.” Dallas rose as they churned around a bend. “What the fuck?”
Roper turned her head just in time to see what Dallas had seen. “Were those…”
“Dogs. A whole pack. Sliced to ribbons.”
“Oh no. No.”
Roper rose and took Dallas by the shoulders. “Relax. Did you see the Kawasaki?”
“No.”
> “Then it wasn’t them, and if it was, by the looks of it, they kicked some furry ass.” Roper waited for Dallas to work through it in her mind. “Now tell me what’s been bothering you about Templeton.”
Shaking off the dread, Dallas replied, “Templeton managed to round up almost two dozen women, right? How is it he did so without any of them being pregnant? None.”
Roper cocked her head. “How do you know?”
Dallas relayed her conversation with Tate. “After talking to Tate, I went back in and asked them how they got out and if any were pregnant. None of our newbies is pregnant. Not one. So I can’t help but wonder—”
“If Templeton intentionally left the pregnant ones there.” Roper stiffened.
Dallas nodded. “Exactly.”
“What did they say happened? How did he get them out?”
“That’s the other piece bothering me. They said they were being moved from one warehouse to another when he nabbed them, yet they got out without a fight and without chase. How do you not miss two dozen women?”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. When you start adding it all up—”
“Wait. If that was the case, why didn’t they follow him back to the station and engage us?”
“Because we were ready.” Dallas started back down the hatch. “Because he knew he’d be killed.”
“Where you going?”
“To get Templeton and a woman who wants nothing more than to be in a room alone with him.”
****
Zoe
Zoe could tell by the dead weight on her back that Hunter had passed out. So far, she’d had to stop six more times; three to keep him from sliding off the back, and three to make repairs to the tracks. It was much slower going now without his eyes, and she calculated she was probably less than an hour ahead of the train even going sixty miles as hour.
“Thank god for you, Mr. Woolworth.”
Mr. Woolworth had been her seventh grade algebra teacher who’d forced her to figure out those ridiculous if train A is heading south at sixty miles per hour, and train B was… questions. She wondered if he had made it through the virus. Somehow, she thought, maybe he had.
Everyone had thoughts about those whose lives had touched theirs. Had they made it? Were they walking around as zombies? Or, as was more likely, had they been eaten by someone they’d cared for?”
Man Eaters (Book 3): Mob Rule Page 22